Utilities and regulators are stuck in a rut, treating rate-base assets in a traditional way and depreciating their value according to a straight-line calculation. But alternative accounting methods might provide a more accurate and financially justifiable way to treat depreciation of utility capital assets.

Are the Feds at war with green power development? You might have thought so, if you had sat through the conference held March 15, 2011, at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where the consensus seemed to be that FERC’s policy of granting open-access rights on electric transmission lines is problematic for green power projects. In short, when wind and solar developers choose to build their own local tie lines to link their projects to the larger grid, FERC policy forces them to make extra line capacity available to rival developers. That requirement doomed the novel Wind Spirit Project, and continues to complicate the job of project financing.

What conservation potential assessments tell us about ‘achievable’ efficiency.

M. Hossein Haeri

Regulators across the country are relying on conservation-potential assessments to guide their policy decisions. Models based on macroeconomic analysis, end-use forecasting and accounting measurements provide different ways to assess the achievability of conservation and efficiency goals.

As the industry works to modernize the national T&D infrastructure, utilities are investing dollars that ultimately increase their cost of service—and therefore end-use prices. To cover their investments, many companies are taking a close look at their tax-management policies.

How will the technology and policy changes now sweeping through the industry affect the architecture of the utility grid? Will America build an increasingly robust transmission infrastructure, or will we rely more on distribution intelligence and microgrids? Scholars at California’s Institute for Energy and Environment analyze various scenarios to predict the possible futures.